Magic through a Professor’s eyes

John Bellairs (1938-1991) was a brilliant author of juvenile and adult literature who wrote many novels and series and parodies over the course of his shortened life. Bellairs created three series: the Anthony Monday series, which contained 4 books, the Lewis Barnavelt series, and the Johnny Dixon series, both of which contained twelve books. The latter two were also finished by the ghost writer Brad Strickland. The Curse of the Blue Figurine, the first in the Dixon series which explores an evil priest who utilizes dark magic to incur his wrath and lengthen his lifespan, The Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt, which contains the most puzzling magic, with an unfinished search for its source while also introducing Fergie, and The Spell of the Sorcerer’s Skull, which ropes in Father Higgins – Johnny’s benevolent local priest – to turn the tables on us, rescuing Professor Childermass instead, begin the series by exploring, among other things, how the Professor must learn how to adapt to magical situations.

Bellairs creates very thorough and thought-out characters, and one of the chief characters who drives each novel (or seems to put on the brakes) is Professor Childermass. At first, the Professor just seems like an average grumpy old man that does nothing but complain. But he is far from that.

The Prof only displays himself as a pain in the neck to people he thinks are a nuisance in his life, but in this case, it is his car that is the nuisance. He is introduced as he makes his entrance into the Dixon home, hot and cursing. His car is stuck in the snow, and he’s ready to blow one of his own cylinders. “You know Henry,” the Professor snarls, “in a hundred years, people will think we’re out of our ever-loving minds to spend so much of our valuable time taking care of automobiles. Think of it! Everybody on this block owns a two-ton hunk of metal that he has to feed gas and oil – “. He barely even acknowledges Johnny, who has just moved in with his grandparents from Long Island, NY. But suddenly, the Prof stops when he sees Gods, Graves, and Scholars, by C. W. Ceram, The Mountains of Pharaoh, by Leonard Cottrell, and James Henry Breasted’s History of Egypt. Interrogating Johnny about whether he was assigned the books or not, Prof discovers a kindred soul – Johnny checked these out on his own volition! Commenting on Johnny’s books on page 15, the Professor speaks disparagingly about his nieces, in glowing approval of Johnny’s reading these books (and not even for an assignment): “I have just come from visiting my sister’s daughter, who lives in New Hampshire. She has two children your age, but they couldn’t read their way through a book of cigarette papers.” 

Now that the Prof has recognized Johnny as someone who is interesting, they go on chatting about questions Johnny is dying to know the answers to. This leads Johnny to start asking about ghosts – being the information lover he is – and this intrigues the Professor. The Professor “[eyes] Johnny curiously” (Bellairs, 16) and “a faint half-smile curl[s] the corners of his mouth” (Bellairs, 16). We can see the Professor is being hooked in by Johnny’s intense curiosity; this gives the Professor the idea of telling the story of Father Baart to keep him going. Father Baart had St. Michael’s Church built in the 1890s, and he also had the altarpiece designed by a mysterious artist. Johnny attends St. Michael’s both for school and church. Baart had a nasty mouth which he used to his heart’s content, making enemies with many people in the town of Duston Heights. The people wanted him out, but the bishop was too lazy to actually do anything. So, Father Baart kept on angering people, and after the mysterious artist left, some of his public enemies started dying from very accidental deaths. After these deaths, Father Baart vanished, leaving not a trace behind. Everything of his was untouched! But some rumors still fly at St. Michael’s Church about seeing him lurking out and about in the back of the church, ready to frighten any innocent soul. The Prof fires into explaining the local mystery.

Professor Childermass describes Father Baart: “He was short and wore a black cloak and he had a big head and a jutting chin and lots of grayish hair that he wore long. And an overhanging forehead, and a hawkish nose, and a deep-set, burning eyes. So if you’re ever in the church late at night well”… only to be cut off by Johnny’s grandpa trying to protect Johnny by saying, “Don’t scare the poor kid to death!” (Bellairs, 21). Gramps wishes for the well-being of Johnny, but also is intrigued by the story too. He follows up with, “It’s a shame that a man like that, a priest and all, should have gone over to the devil” (Bellairs 22). Since the Prof is charmed by Johnny’s interests, he goes to great lengths expressing the story to entice Johnny for the entire time. We can even see his grandparents being pulled in.

In this short outburst, we can clearly see that on the outside the Prof may seem like a toxic, grumpy guy, but when he is speaking with someone he finds interesting or worth talking to, the Prof really opens up. We can see this bond being formed between the two when Johnny discovers the figurine.

One of Johnny’s classmates at school named Eddie Tompke really hates Johnny. Eddie is really jealous of Johnny due to his smarts. You see, Eddie’s grades are in the gutter, and he takes his frustration out on Johnny. Being the smaller kid, Johnny was always afraid of being beat up by Tompke. So, on one fateful February day, Johnny is about to leave the church and spots Eddie talking to another kid right outside the door. Johnny obviously doesn’t want to run into Eddie again, so he goes back in, and performs a simple prayer, hoping that Eddie would be gone when he finished. But Eddie is still there. Frustrated, Johnny decides to have a look in the basement to bide his time. Bringing only a flashlight, he creeps down the creaky basement steps. Narrowing down to a bookcase, he grabs a random book. Once he picks the book up, spiders start to crawl all over the bookcase and a few get onto the book. Johnny hates spiders, and this anomaly almost causes him to throw up. But out of nowhere, the spiders disappear! Johnny is interested by this and attempts to grab the book that the spiders resided in originally, but fear takes hold of him, and he jerks his hand back three times in a row before he finally acquires the courage (or foolishness) to pick up the foreign object. Opening it, he discovers that the book is hollowed out, and inside resides a strange blue figurine and an ominous note left behind by Father Baart. The note reads: “Whoever removes these things from the church does so at his own peril. I abjure you by the living God not to endanger your immortal soul. Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Remigius Baart.” Johnny is terrified. In the midst of trying to set things right by putting everything back, he hears a rustling noise, and is startled even more. In a panic, he runs back up the stairs, out of the basement, while still carrying the book with the figurine inside. So, with nowhere to go, he thinks of going to the Professor, but can’t go right away. Johnny hides the book in his room, and waits days until he can visit the Prof.

When Johnny visits the Professor’s house, Johnny catches him off guard in his so-called fuss closet. The Professor is forced to explain his fuss closet, explaining that “[he] has a rotten temper… So, [he] came up here –as [he] always [does] in such cases… and he fussed. [He] cursed and yelled and pounded the walls and the floor,” (Bellairs, 39). Normally, a random person walking inside of your home wouldn’t incline you to tell them a story about a closet, right? But the Professor is so fond of Johnny that he can’t help but welcome him in at any time even though he doesn’t even know why Johnny is there in the first place. The Professor’s reaction to the information Johnny shares with him about the figurine is telling, for it reveals how the Prof deals with the supernatural: the Professor immediately spouts “Good God! Are you serious? Do you really mean what you just said?” (Bellairs, 40). The immediate questioning of Johnny, one of his good friends, unveils how skeptical he is of anything supernatural. But Johnny, determined to find answers, nods and persuades the Professor into inspecting what he found.

A few weeks later, Johnny catches the Prof reenacting sea battles in his bathtub. Bellairs describes it so thoroughly even though the scene itself seems silly at best. Bellairs says Johnny, “… found the old man kneeling beside the tub. He was wearing a rubber waterproof apron, and the sleeves of his shirt were rolled up. The tub was half full of water, and in it floated a fleet of little wooden boats. They were galleys, with matchstick oars and little triangular sails. Little paper flags fluttered from the sterns of the ships. Half of the flags were red and gold and had coats of arms on them. The other half were green and had gold crescents,” (Bellairs, 61). But why describe it so much? In reality, these are just little tiny boats that are being fiddled with by the Professor. This scene is so out of the ordinary and weird. No one would expect a scene with a Professor playing with wooden ships in a bathtub, or would they? But Bellairs goes so far to really make it feel natural.

It feels natural because at this point, we still know the Professor as a sort of kooky crazy type of guy. As he is introduced, he is complaining about cars and asking for booze and fudge, which is absolutely not something a person with good etiquette and common sense would do. So, this scene with the Professor playing with boats furthers the idea that the Professor is this kooky crazy kind of guy, but it also hints at other parts of his persona. Childermass is “reenacting the Battle of Lepanto, which had taken place in 1571” (Bellairs, 61). But why this battle in particular? Why isn’t it just a plain `ol scene just for fun? Well, because Childermass is a professor of history, and in order for his students to have the best lecture on whatever historical topic they are covering, he reenacts them to freshen up and really understand it better. Although he may hate his students, he wants to be the best professor he can be for them. This care can be seen whenever he is with Johnny as well, because Johnny is someone who the Prof truly enjoys being with.

The Professor’s reactions to each type of magic presented are really interesting, because they are much different than any normal person’s reactions would be, and since the Professor is a professor, he is already influenced and lives by cold hard FACTS, so when you put someone like this in a situation where facts don’t apply anymore, they will have a much more amplified and distinct reaction. Now, the Professor does acknowledge the existence of magic, both black and white. In responding to Grandpa, he mentions medieval sorcerers that were priests – which means he acknowledges the existence of sorcerers in history – and even says “If you fool around with magic, there must be a terrible temptation to call upon the powers of hell” (Bellairs, 22).

So, the Professor is talking about magic to Johnny and his family, but this is a lot different than actually being in the frontlines of the supernatural. It’s a lot easier to say something than it is to truly believe in it. In each book, the Professor is constantly brought to a point of conflict where he must acknowledge the existence of the supernatural. The locus, or the location of the Professor’s acknowledgement of the supernatural, shows an interesting progression through the three novels. In these loci, he just doesn’t know how to actualize the magic in his mind, which produces many memorable reactions and ideas being presented from the Professor throughout the series.

The Professor directly harms Johnny by denying magic because he starves Johnny of any help. For example, on page 42, at the fuss closet, Johnny comes to vent his frustrations and fears about the figurine, thinking it has magical powers (which it does), but the Prof scoffs it off and unveils it to just be some souvenir. He exclaims “That’s a good one!” (Bellairs, 42) and, “Here, have a look! This is funny, it really is!” (Bellairs, 42). At this point, what Johnny has presented to him seems just like some joke. I mean, in the eyes of anyone sane, why would some random souvenir from Cairo, Illinois be imbued with magic power? Johnny even gets the figurine checked by Scholastic’s Hobbies, a toy magazine, to see if it has any value, and it didn’t. It was “manufactured by Mound City Novelties of St. Louis, Missouri” (Bellairs, 63). But ultimately, the Professor’s upfront denial of Johnny’s findings harms him. This reveals another side of the Professor, his weaker side.

After he discovers Johnny was actually being hurt all along because he didn’t accept the supernatural quicker, Prof bears an enormous load of guilt. This guilt is what causes him to have greater drive towards the end of the book to fend off Father Baart and save Johnny, because the Prof thinks all of it is his fault. These actions and reactions are hardly shown by the Professor to anyone, because his arrogant, rude side is dominant. But when push comes to shove, this emphasizes that the Professor is really not the braggadocious man we first see.

Johnny enters St. Michael’s church to pray and is approached by a kind old man named Mr. Beard. Mr. Beard really just seemed like a kind soul who wants to help Johnny, but this is all a ruse to cover his true intentions. Mr. Beard was actually Father Baart disguising himself, appearing only to Johnny (invisible to everyone else)! Mr. Beard gives Johnny a strange old ring to make Johnny feel better, because he can’t just deny an old man’s kindness, but this ring is actually an intense catalyst for Father Baart’s dark magic! Father Baart uses the ring to wring from Johnny his life force, control him, and send more powerful and evil magic into Johnny. The ring initially acts friendly, but we can clearly see it’s not, once Johnny encounters his greatest enemy, Eddie Tompke.

Johnny finds himself walking on the outskirts of town when he runs into Tompke once again. At this point, Johnny is furious, because he knows Eddie made an innocent kid steal Johnny’s sacred prayer book, and the ring intensifies this emotion. When Johnny is still unseen, “a force was rising up inside him, irresistible, it was this force that made him do what he did next” (Bellairs, 101). This can be thought of as the ring amplifying Johnny’s anger to have to spawn a vengeful situation… Ordinarily, poor old Johnny, polite and unassuming, would never jump out and start scolding someone, saying things like “I hope you fall down a manhole and break your other arm! You hear what I said, you rotten creep?” (Bellairs, 101). Even Johnny himself doesn’t believe that he’s just said that to him: it was as if “somebody else was using his body and his vocal chords” (Bellairs, 101). Johnny provokes Eddie and wakes the sleeping beast. As Eddie walks towards him, Johnny practically quivers to death. But suddenly, the ring activates and “Johnny felt a sharp pain in his ring finger, and it seemed to him that the yellow stone flashed. And then a strong wind began to blow,” (Bellairs 101). Then, the gust of air blasts rustles nearby bushes and blasts Eddie against a brick wall. This anomaly causes Johnny to then pace around for hours, terrified of what else the ring’s power could do.

Johnny, now moping to school and back, attracts the attention of his grandparents and the Prof. They meet together to discuss what to do, and the Professor mentions, “I haven’t seen him to talk to in about two weeks.” The grandparents agree, because they have no better ideas. “I came over here hoping that you two might enlighten me” (Bellairs 106). But none of the guardians knew what to do. So, the Professor proposes that he follow Johnny to the church and investigate why he is going there. “I’m good at tailing people. I was an intelligence officer during World War I. My code name was the Crab” (Bellairs, 107). The next night, the prof follows Johnny, but Johnny passes the church and heads across the Merrimac River to Hannah Duston’s Park. Johnny starts talking to someone, and all the Prof sees is Johnny having a conversation with the air! But still, the Professor doesn’t waver in his ideals. The Professor still doesn’t believe something supernatural is going on. He essentially sugarcoats to Johnny’s grandparents that he thinks Johnny has gone mad! The Prof proposes that Johnny should seek “mental help” (Bellairs, 124), and get “a real psychiatrist,” (Bellairs, 125). 

The Prof takes Johnny on a small vacation way up in New Hampshire to forget about all his worries, and another paranormal anomaly occurs that the Prof still refuses to believe. In their little rental home, Johnny finds a Bible with the words “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord,” (Bellairs, 150) underlined in red. Clearly, neither of them placed this Bible and underlined it, so Johnny’s first thought is that this was the doing of Father Baart, but the Professor just shrugs it off once again. He says, “Did you underline these words?” or “Oh, ghost my FOOT! I thought we were through with ghosts,” (Bellairs, 151). But this hurts Johnny’s feelings so the Professor apologizes immediately, but we can still see that the Prof’s first reaction is to doggedly refuse its existence. 

But finally, when the Professor wakes up to Johnny’s absence, the scale has finally tipped. He could shrug off words and strange actions, but a random disappearance in the middle of the night was so unlike Johnny that the Professor just couldn’t just deny it anymore. The Professor couldn’t let something atrocious happen to Johnny so “in an instant the Professor was on his feet. He was pulling on his pants, pulling them on over his pajama bottoms” (Bellairs 158). The Prof tracks Johnny’s footprints, scaling steep cliffs, narrow ledges, and harsh trails all through a pitch black thunder storm. He finds a black shadowy figure looming over Johnny, and the figure threatens the Prof. But, immediately, the Professor comes to action, yelling “My mother met you once when you were alive! And she said you were the rottenest, meanest creature that ever crawled on the face of the earth!” (Bellairs 165). The Prof also grabs Johnny and starts a fire to fight back against Father Baart. We can see that as soon as the Professor accepts the fact that something paranormal is going on, he acts quickly like an apex predator. It is because of the Professor’s quick actions and thoughts that allow Johnny to finally seal Father Baart and his curse. Without him, the wooden box would have never been uncovered, which was what allowed Johnny to survive and bring back the Professor!

In The Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt, the sequel, or the 2nd in the 12-part series, the Professor’s input on the story differs immensely from Curse, but in the end, he still is able to rescue Johnny, although in a much different way. For example, the Professor doesn’t even realize what is going on until he realizes Johnny is missing!

Johnny and the Prof find themselves visiting a museum and finding information about H. Bagwell Glomus, a rich owner of a healthy cereal company. Mr. Glomus has not left behind a will, but instead some disparate clues that were showcased in the museum. Johnny decides to give it a go, and the Prof toys with Johnny a bit, saying “Well? Have you figured out where Mr. Glomus’s will is? You’ve had oodles of time,” (Bellairs, 11). Although Johnny doesn’t have a clue on where to start, the will of Mr. Glomus starts to intrigue him. In this second novel, Johnny’s grandma is diagnosed with cancer, and the treatment is expensive. Concerned for her life, Johnny goes to drastic measures, and he searches for the Glomus’ will to earn a $10,000 cash prize.

Johnny’s friend Fergie from camp becomes a main character, due to the story mainly being set at a sleepaway camp. Although, in the beginning, the Professor still does try to direct Johnny away from finding the will of the Glomuses, saying “I’ve had enough of chewing over the affairs of the Glomus family. It’s time for us to pay up and hit the road… Arrgh!” (Bellairs, 13). It may not be obvious, but the Professor is directing Johnny away from the supernatural without even knowing it, for searching for the will is what causes Johnny to be put in a perilous situation later in the book. But he isn’t doing this intentionally because his guilt from Curse would obviously kick in. So, the Professor doesn’t have as many interactions with the supernatural as in Curse. In fact, he only has one interaction with the supernatural throughout the story. When the Prof discovers that Johnny is chasing after the will again, he runs into Mrs. Woodley, who is the keeper of the inn Johnny stayed at in his search.

At camp, and still obsessing about the will due to his Grandma’s sickness and the financial award, Johnny wants to call the Professor to report some findings. He decides to go into town to make a phone call even though the rules of camp allow for no phone contact. But Johnny wheedles his counselors to allow it. So Johnny steps into a quaint inn owned by a woman named Mrs. Woodley. He waits patiently and is eventually able to get the Prof on the horn. After checking in on his grandma, Johnny says “I found out something about Mr. Glomus’s will!” (Bellairs, 50). Furious, the Professor lashes back by saying “John, you are supposed to be enjoying yourself! You are supposed to be tramping about on woodland paths among the autumnal splendor of the White Mountains! What on EARTH are you doing thinking about dear old Mr. Glomus’s will?” (Bellairs, 51). The Professor clearly wants nothing to do with such petty ideas and immediately shuts Johnny down, as always. But, as soon as Johnny hangs up from the call about the Glomus will, he spots Mrs. Woodley, standing like a stick, creepily staring at him. He also notices a rather gloomy-faced young man giving him the evil eye.

After Johnny returns from camp, grandma is still sick. Johnny is still worried because he fears being abandoned again (recall that his mother is dead and his father, a fighter pilot is MIA in Korea). Johnny goes off on a tangent away from his normal school life, thinking that if Grandma dies, then Grandpa will be too sad to do anything, and the Professor won’t want to adopt him either, so he is extremely anxious as the days go by. One cold day in November, Johnny returns to an empty home and a note, saying that the Grampuses went to the hospital for a normal checkup. But Johnny, drowning in anxiety, does not believe this one bit. He decides to form his own plan to save Grandma: he’ll take money from their saved up stash, take a train north to New Hampshire, stay at Mrs. Woodley’s inn, and investigate for the will and get the prize money. On the day he was going to leave, he found an undertaker’s business card on their doorstep, and he almost broke down. But unexpectedly. filled with courage from fear, he immediately left his own note and starts his escapade to find the will. 

Johnny’s grandparents and the Prof immediately discover Johnny’s absence, and the Prof chases after Johnny. In this, we see again his military spy skills in action (this is mentioned in Curse, calling himself The Crab); we see this side of him when he discovers Johnny has disappeared. When he finds out, he immediately goes over to the Fergusons and gives Fergie “the good old-fashioned third degree” which is a long and harsh interrogation officers in the military often do. When Johnny is hurt, we can see the Professor’s mood intensify. After the interrogation, when he drives the car with Fergie, he drives super crazily, “he was a terror on wheels… He jammed the accelerator down, and the needle flicked past ninety” (Bellairs, 120). This dangerous driving causes Fergie to grip down and get slammed around the car, proving the Prof’s extreme will and grit that is carried over from his military life. 

The Prof and Fergie discover themselves at Mrs. Woodley’s inn and they ask her if she has seen Johnny. Woodley immediately tells them no, but the Professor doesn’t believe her. Looking around, the Prof finds Johnny’s “waterproof matchbox” (Bellairs, 128) that leads him to realize that Mrs. Woodley did see Johnny and is lying to them the whole time. He rashly “reached out and picked up a small china dog, wheeled around, and threw it into the fireplace” (Bellairs, 129). After this, he starts yelling at Mrs. Woodley, revealing her vengeful side. But, foaming at the mouth, she screamed and screeched at Fergie and the Prof in a hardly human voice.  All the Professor has to say is “I never imagined…I mean, who could possibly have guessed…?” (Bellairs, 130). He has essentially already accepted that something supernatural was up, right then and there. Instead of taking the whole story to deny and finally accept the supernatural, here he just blatantly accepts it as soon as it happens! After this, he finds Johnny knocked out in the crumbling church where the will resides and rescues him before the building collapses, so, in a way, the Professor does technically save Johnny from the supernatural again, but by rescuing Johnny out of a perilous situation instead. In the end, the Professor’s military training likely provided him with the will and resolve needed to perform this insane chain of actions to arrive in just the nick of time to rescue unconscious Johnny and save him from getting crushed.

In The Spell of the Sorcerer’s Skull, the 3rd book in the 12-part series, the Professor is the one who is victimized by the magic. This not only changes his role in the story, but also opens up room for other change. For example, we are introduced to a hero, albeit an already fond friend of Johnny’s, Father Higgins.

 In Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire, on a cold February night, a snowstorm was brewing, and so was the Professor’s temper. Johnny and the Professor stay at Fitzwilliam Inn on their winter vacation trip, not a pleasant one. The Professor, in his temper, shouts “Winter paradise indeed! I’d like to give a piece of my mind to the boneheads who settled up in this godforsaken wilderness! AND to the cheapo types who run the state and don’t provide enough money to clear the roads or sand them in the wintertime!” (Bellairs, 4). Responding to this, Johnny comforts the Professor, saying “Please, Professor! Don’t be angry, please don’t! Everything’ll be all right!” (Bellairs, 4). Already on these first few pages, we can see a slight role shift between the two. Johnny is now the one comforting and placating the Professor instead of receiving admonition from him. Once they arrived at the Inn, the owner, Mr. Spofford asks the Prof for his last name, because he was unable to read it in the guest book.

 Mr. Spofford, the owner, once hearing the Professor’s name, reacts strongly. “Mr. Spofford looked shocked. His hand flew to his mouth, and there was an uncomfortable silence in the room. The Professor presses him, giving some treasured family history, and asks him “So may I ask why my name has given you such a turn?” (Bellairs, 9). 

Mr. Spofford splutters: “Oh, it ain’t nothin’ against… against you personally. Or… or your family name. It’s only jist that, well, we got this clock here that we show to visitors sometimes, n’ it’s s’posed to be haunted, an’… well, it’s called the Childermass clock.”

As a side note, Bellairs employs a liberal use of coincidences. For instance, in Mummy, you’ve learned that it is only the proximity of the sleepaway camp to the Glomus Estate that allows the plot to continue to thicken. That’s a coincidence. Johnny and Fergie are at a camp, hundreds of miles from both the Glomus mueseum and the Duston Heights – sheer coincidence. And in Figurine another coincidence is almost impossible to believe: On the trip that the Prof treats Johnny on to relieve his worries, the mountain nearby just so happens to be the burial site of Father Baart’s ashes, St. Michael’s church, hundreds of miles away. So when they are getting all snug in their cabin, it just so happens that Baart’s ghost is able to waltz in and hypnotize Johnny and take him to the burial site. 

In Skull, we find out that the reason for the Fitzwilliam Inn possessing the clock is that, “it got left on the front porch here, one night durin’ a snowstorm.” Quite a coincidence. Nevertheless, we read on. The Professor’s reacting to this family heirloom is still quite revealing. He knows it is of a strange room where his uncle mysteriously died in a horrific position, but completely disregards the fact that it could possibly be magical. You would think that the Professor would try to be more skeptical to prevent danger, but no, he still hasn’t. Even when he gets the “oddest sensation” from touching a mini skull – which is always a creepy object – he doesn’t make anything of it. 

Later in the book, while Johnny was doing his homework with Fergie, he notices a Jack-o-lantern on the Professor’s upstairs window. The Professor already isn’t really the type of guy to put decorations up for any holiday, so seeing a Jack-o-lantern on his windowsill during March was quite the shock to the two friends. The next morning, Johnny confronts the Professor about the strange actions, and asks “I just wanta know how come you made a jack-o-lantern when it’s only March” (Bellairs 31). The Professor immediately retorts by telling Johnny “either this is some kind of bizarre joke that you’re trying out on me, or you need to get a pair of glasses!” (Bellairs 31). Once again, the Professor glosses over suspicious and potentially dangerous remarks from Johnny, similar to the figurine in Curse or findings about the Glomus will in Crypt. However, unlike the other two books in the series, the Professor is affected by the magic, ultimately biting him in the back for not learning to be more cautious in the situations he has been placed in.

In order to save the Professor from his mistakes, Johnny teams up with Fergie and Higgins and they begin a journey to find his whereabouts. They eventually rescue the Prof, and to his own amazement, he doesn’t even know what happened! Although in the first two novels, the Prof was able to admit to the magic in just the nick of time, in Skull, he never even realizes that magic is affecting him, even after randomly waking up on an island in front of Johnny. The Professor was only able to realize after Johnny explained every detail to him. 

All in all, Professor Childermass adheres to who he always was: a grumpy old man with a flaming hot temper, knowledgeable to the world yet still naive, and a truly caring figure just hiding behind his shell of ferocity. From the first novel when he admits to the supernatural at the last second (at Johnnie’s disappearance), to the last where he is ultimately drained by magic (losing all memory and being entirely taken hostage), this old grumpy caring ciggie-loving coot never changes!

Student feedback by Natalie Liu:

Professor Childermass may appear mean and ignorant on the outside, but beneath his tough exterior is a deeply kind and passionate soul who genuinely cares for curious children. The Prof is spotted reenacting a particular scene of history in his bathtub: “Childermass is a professor of history, and in order for his students to have the best lecture on whatever historical topic they are covering, he reenacts them to freshen up and really understand it better.” This again reveals how much care and dedication Prof takes into account when teaching something he is interested in. I like how Johnny, in particular, draws out a soft and vulnerable side of Prof, the side that feeds Johnny’s curiosity, and is quietly protective of him when he seeks his guidance. After Johnny’s first magical encounter, he seeks Prof for help, but he denies that there was any supernatural existence, diminishing what Johnny had truly experienced that very day. Prof laughs, “Here, have a look! This is funny, it really is!” (Bellairs, 42). At this point, what Johnny has presented to him seems just like some joke.” Prof is historically knowledgeable about magic and emotionally fond of Johnny. As a historian, he understands that sorcerers and dark practices existed in the past. However, when magic enters his real, personal life, especially when it involves someone close to him, Prof is skeptical in his response to Johnny’s claim. Everything Johnny describes suggests that it is clearly more than a simple coincidence, but Prof’s reliance on logic and rational explanations prevents him from admitting that the world may not operate solely on facts and reasoning. The professor’s inner conflict between knowledge and belief stumbles him and reveals the more human, weaker side of him; he is not heartless nor is he foolish, he is just a rational man confronted with an experience beyond logic that challenges his identity.